Bob Holly is one name in pro wrestling that is not meant to be trifled with. Holly once beat up former WWE superstar Rene Dupree in the ring for real during a house show.
Bob “Hardcore” Holly is well known to be as tough as they come in pro wrestling. Along with having a reputation as a tough guy, he also is known for his austerity both inside and outside the ring. A man that has zero tolerance for frivolity.
Bob’s stiffness with rookies and other wrestlers has made him an unlikeable person in the locker room. Many wrestlers have been vocal about Holly’s bullying backstage.
On an episode of Grilling JR, Jim Ross imparted to the fans, his take on the Holly-Dupree incident. Back in 2004, at a house show event, Bob Holly teamed up with Charlie Haas to take on Rene Dupree and Kenzo Suzuki. During the match, Holly genuinely started pounding on Dupree for real by putting him in a tight face-lock and landing solid punches.
Holly reportedly was blowing off steam and punishing Dupree for using Holly’s rental car and getting a ticket that Holly eventually had to pay for. The ticket impacted Holly’s insurance and so he decided to knock sense into Dupree the hard way.
Holly was later fined $10,000 by the WWE for his misconduct and was told that his long tenure with the company saved him from getting fired. According to JR, Bob Holly is an old-school guy with strict principles. Holly hated people who lied and he could recognize a phony when he saw one. JR’s view on the issue was rather diplomatic.
He stated, “Bob was disciplining Rene, but you don’t endorse it, ‘Yeah, beat your teammate up.’ You don’t endorse it, but there are some old-school principles that some guys brought with them from the beginnings of their career and through the territories and Bob Holly did that. He’s an old school guy, he’s old school today. I would suggest that if you cross him today, and lied to him, or screwed his life, he’ll try to whip your ass, and more than likely, he will be successful. I don’t remember what, we might have done a fine, I’m not sure.”
From JR’s perspective, what Holly did was not something to condone. However, he believes, Holly took up matters into his own hands because it was his way of dealing with problems.
Was Hardcore Holly a locker room bully?
While there is a laundry list of wrestlers who have labeled Holly as a bully, JR believed that Holly was just a tough guy who hated liars.
“He’s a tough guy. Did he go around knocking your glasses off, or flipping over your table in the lunch room, your tray? No. But he could pick out a liar amongst a million people. And like I said, he’s an old-school guy. I can’t defend what he’s doing, but he was never disrespectful to me for one second,” Said JR.
Rene Dupree wasn’t the only one who experienced the wrath of Holly. In 2003, On the third edition of Tough Enough, Holly beat up a rookie by the name of Matt Cappotelli. Matt reportedly did nothing to tick holly off. It was just Holly trying to roughen him up and making a statement that “wrestling is not an easy business”.
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